


The Sea Calls Your Name

by Flyting



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Basically Ben Solo is Rebecca de Winter, Dark Ben Solo, Gaslighting, Gratuitous Abuse of the Classics, Hux is still an asshole outside of the First Order, M/M, Rebecca!AU, Sort of implied Ben Solo/Poe Dameron, and Hux is his Mrs. Danvers, gothic horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-08-29 11:48:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8488171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flyting/pseuds/Flyting
Summary: Finn and Poe Dameron are newly married, but Dameron's housekeeper, Mr. Hux, will not allow them to forget the ghost of Poe's first husband- Ben Solo.   "Do you think the dead come back and watch the living? Sometimes I think I hear his footsteps in the hall at night. I feel him standing right beside me, the way you are now. Do you think he watches the two of you together?"Or, a little late for Halloween, here's a Kylux/Stormpilot AU of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca.





	

“ _It wouldn't make for sanity, would it, living with the devil_."

  
  
  
  
Hux is smoothing fresh linens onto the bed, folding crisp corners into the coverlet, when the boy bursts into the room in a storm of hurt feelings and angry tears.  
  
Hux barely spares him a glance. The sheets have to be tucked under the mattress, the duvet turned down and the pillows placed just so. He does not have to do this sort of work himself. The Dameron estate has fleets of droids and human servants too for the hundred petty little menial tasks that it takes to keep a house such as this in working order, but Hux will not allow a one of them into Ben’s room. The thought of them handling his things with their uncaring hands, existing in his space, breathing his air- it’s unbearable.

“ _Why_?”  
  
“I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific.”

The boy’s jaw is hard, petulant. He’s scrubbed his face and discarded the heavy Naboo finery he wore to Dameron’s party, but there are still traces of the thick makeup clinging to the corners of his eyes and on his plump lower lip. Messy. Ben would never have been so careless.  
  
“Why did you tell me to wear that? You knew those were Ben’s clothes.” Hux feels his lip curl at that name in the boy’s uncultured mouth. “You _knew_. It was what he wore right before he _died_. When he saw me Poe looked like he was going to have a heart attack and now he won’t even _talk to me_ , he thinks I did it on purpose! Just…” he trails off and Hux hopes that he might cry again. “I thought, when you told me about that costume I thought we were-“  
  
“Friends?” Hux doesn’t sneer.  
  
He would almost feel bad, were he capable of feeling anything at all anymore. The boy had pushed his sticky overtures of friendship into Hux’s hands as soon as he’d arrived, as if he could be won over so easily, as if he could be _bought_ with a warm smile and a few clumsy words.  
  
“ _So where are you from, Hux? Originally. Just, you don’t sound like anybody around here-”_

“ _Arkanis_.”  
  
_“Oh yeah? That’s neat.”_  
  
_“Have you heard of it?”_  
  
_“Well… not really, no. But I’m sure it’s nice-”_  
  
When they were children, Ben had known more about Hux’s long-forsaken homeworld than Hux had himself. _“They bombed it.”_ Hux had known that part. He remembered it. _“So are you secretly an Imperialist, then?”_ His breath warm on Hux’s face as he leaned in like a boy eager to be told a secret. _“Have you come to spy on us? Have you come for revenge?”_  
  
He had seemed disappointed by the answer that no, they had come because his mother needed a job and because Senator Organa had wanted a housekeeper whose son could be a playmate for Ben. _“But my father is,”_ Hux had added desperately, even though mother had told him to never, ever speak of his father again. _"He was an officer there."_ Ben had thrown back his head, exposing his long, pale throat, and laughed, delighted.  
  
The big window is open to admit the salt-tinged sea air, and the distant sound of crashing waves washes in with it. Hux crosses to it, his spine stiff and straight. When he stands like this, hands clasped behind his back, he imagines his likely long-dead father’s approval.  
   
There is a hesitant footstep. Timid. The lord of the house terrified by a mere servant. Pathetic.

Ben was never terrified of anything.

“Why do you hate me so much?” the boy asks behind him. “What have I ever done to you?”  
  
“You tried to take his place.”

 _Tried._ Even dead, Ben was more than a match for this fumbling child. No family, no background, as common as Hux was himself, and yet he wanted to sit in Ben’s chair and call himself _Mister Dameron._ As if he could ever hope to fill the void Ben had left behind. “I watched you go down the stairs tonight just like I watched him then,” Hux turns to smirk across the shocked silence between them. “Even in the same clothes you couldn’t compare. It requires a certain broadness of the shoulders,” he trails two fingers disdainfully down the narrow slope of one. “A certain _grace_. Did you know that Ben’s grandmother was a queen?”

“I know that Ben’s dead,” the boy wields the words like a weapon he doesn’t know how to use. Blunt and clumsy. The blow is only glancing.  
  
“And yet he’s still stronger than you. You didn’t know Ben. He would never let anything stop him, not even death. He had powers you can’t even imagine.” It was a secret, their secret. _Look what I can do_ whispered in the dead of night. “Do you think the dead come back and watch the living? Sometimes I think I hear his footsteps in the hall at night. I feel him standing right beside me, the way you are now. Do you think he watches you and your husband together?”  
  
Ben had always been possessive of his things.

As a boy he had broken a servant’s fingers, one at a time, for moving his hairbrush without permission. Hux had watched him do it. He would like to watch Ben break the new Mr. Dameron.   
  
The boy runs a frustrated hand over his shorn hair. “Stop, Hux, this is- just _stop- stop it_ -“  
  
“Don’t get upset. Here, come and stand by the window. The fresh air will do you good.”  
  
The estate sits on a sloping cliff which trails downward into the planet’s dark, tumultuous sea. Waves crash against the rocks far below, battering constantly. It is never calm, never. It reminds him of Arkanis sometimes, of the omnipresent sound of rain there, but mostly it reminds him of Ben. Wild and restless, never tamed. Never. Sometimes Hux thinks he can hear Ben’s laughter in the sound of the waves. It’s like Ben is mocking him. Ben loved to mock him. Hux loved him anyway.  
  
_“I’m getting married, Armie,” he had laughed, sprawled, decadent, on Hux’s narrow bed. “Mommy insisted, so I asked Poe. You remember him- the pilot? He has some big estate on Yavin-IV he inherited from his grandfather. Well, aren’t you going to congratulate me?”_ _Ben’s big hands on Hux’s skin. His hair a dark halo fanned out on the bed. “Oh, don’t sulk, it’s childish.” When Hux still could not find the words to express his upset, it was Ben’s soft lips on his hand, kissing towards his wrist. “Poe’s very handsome, don’t you think? He’s an idiot and he talks too much, but he’s handsome.”_  
  
_“If you say so.” Ben had been his first. His only. The thought of sharing him with another man makes his fingernails dig into the work-calloused skin of his palms. Ben in someone else’s bed. Touching him. Ben’s mouth on him. Someone else calling Ben husband. The images won’t leave his head. Which, of course, was Ben’s intention, the bastard._  
  
_Satisfied that he’s gotten the reaction he wanted, Ben smiles. “You’re coming with me, of course. We’ll need a housekeeper. I’m certainly not doing all that shit. I’m going to ask mommy-” he sucks a mark into the soft skin of Hux’s wrist. “-if I can take you with me. You can be my wedding present.” And Hux likes the sound of that._  
  
He liked being here on Yavin with Ben. He liked the house. Liked the sea. _The color of your pretty eyes,_ Ben used to say. He liked fucking Ben in Dameron’s bed when the other man was away. Liked every secret, twisted thing Ben showed him in the dark.  

Leia Organa knew her son, knew his nature, and she kept him on a tight leash accordingly. Dameron was no match for Ben. Ben could do whatever he wanted here, and he did. Oh, he did. Everything had been so, so perfect before-  
  
The stupid little boy who dared try to take Ben’s place is crying softly beside him, his hands clenched tight on the window frame.

“Why don’t you go?” Hux asks gently. “He doesn’t want you here. He's got his memories. He doesn't love you, he wants to be alone again with Ben. You’ve got nothing to stay for. No family, nothing to live for, really. No one wants you. Look down there.” It’s such a long way down to the rocks below, and somewhere Ben is laughing. “It's easy, isn't it? Why don't you do it?”  
  
"Please stop..."

There is a pressure in the air like a storm is building. Like it felt, sometimes, when Ben was angry.  
  
“Why don’t you? Go on. Don’t be afraid,” Hux whispers. He knows the boy’s history; heard it all blurted out eagerly, like a gift. How he was orphaned as a child. Friendless. Raised in a government-run instutution on some backwater Outer Rim world. How wealthy Republic poster-boy Poe Dameron lending him his jacket became just the best thing that had ever happened to him, there was no one else, there was nothing-  
  
“Hey buddy, you in here?”  
  
The boy blinks like he’s waking from a dream, turning to face his husband standing in the doorway.

Even now, Poe doesn’t dare enter Ben’s room.   
  
“Yeah, uh-“ the boy scrubs at one eye with the back of his hand. His voice shakes “Poe? What’s wrong?”  
  
“There’s something going on just down the coast. I’m going to take a speeder and go check it out.” He hesitates. “Do you… want to come?”  
  
“Yeah, I do. I really, really do,” he says quickly, throwing Hux a mistrustful look and pulling away like he’s been scalded. Hux says nothing as Dameron glances between the two of them, suspicious.  
  
In that cold, formal voice he reserves for talking to Hux, Poe Dameron says, “Will you have some droids follow us down with food and hot tea for everyone?”  
  
“Yes, sir.” Hux matches his tone. Meets his eyes, unblinking.  
  
Dameron has always hated him. He _knew_ , how could he not, Ben had delighted in his own lack of subtlety, but he wouldn't dream of sending Hux away. Ben wouldn't allow it.  
  
“Look, about earlier…” Poe begins as the door closes behind him leaving Hux alone.  
  
Before long they cross the narrow strip of yard, clinging tight to each other on the back of Dameron’s speeder bike. They are heading towards the jagged path which winds down to the meagre strip of beach that isn’t covered in treacherous rock. In the distance, he can see a commotion. A ship has crashed landed in the ocean and scurrying figures are struggling to keep it from disappearing beneath the water.  
  
Hux watches them go. Then he turns back to the sea.

Somewhere in the waves, Ben laughs.


End file.
